Earthbound

Sammi blinks, for once unruffled. “Tavia, I didn’t want to bring this out too, but you have to reunite with your partner,” she says flatly. “Or you’re both going to die. Forever.”

“What are you talking about?” I demand. I step forward, my chin raised. “I’m an Earthbound. My soul is immortal and tied to this earth for all time.” Rebecca’s voice again. I don’t push her away; she knows what she’s talking about.

“That’s what we’ve believed for thousands of years,” Sammi replies. “But thanks to a Reduciata Earthbound who came to us a few decades ago, we’ve discovered that’s not entirely true. We’ve tried to keep it quiet, but you need to hear the truth.”

I feel shaky and have to lean against Benson’s chest to stay upright. Though I can’t remember all my lives —any of my lives, really—I can sense a bedrock of truth that goes back thousands, maybe millions of years, that there’s always another day, another life, another chance to do better, be better. Even the hint of a threat against that shakes me to my very core. “My existence is dependent on my choice of boyfriend?” I snap, my voice dripping with disbelief.

Sammi looks at me strangely as Elizabeth steps forward. “You don’t remember why you have to find him, do you?”

I’m afraid to answer. To look stupid and dependent on them.

“This isn’t about romance, Tave. This about life and death—your curse.”

“The one for creating humans?” I ask shakily.

Elizabeth nods. “You know how the things you create disappear in about five minutes? Once you reconnect with Quinn, they’ll stay permanently.”

“Which is actually the less important part,” Sammi adds. “The powers of the Earthbound are like …” She pauses. “What’s the best way to explain this? They’re like a battery. And each lifetime you find each other is like charging that battery. Your powers become not only permanent, but stronger. And each lifetime you don’t connect, they weaken.” She glances at Mark and I don’t like the fear in her eyes. Not fear for me, fear of me. She’s afraid to tell me this. Afraid what I’ll do. “And like batteries, they eventually go dead.”

“No,” I say, dismissing her words. “We’ve existed since the beginning of time. We don’t just go dead.”

“You do if enough lifetimes pass.”

I say nothing.

It’s impossible.

“For centuries we’ve believed that the Reduciata are motivated by greed—mainly a desire for power. And while that is true, it’s worse than we thought. Both the brotherhoods keep meticulous records. The Reduciata discovered it first, but once we found out, it was easy to confirm. Earthbounds have some kind of finite source of power, and it takes a great deal of that power to reincarnate. If they don’t find their partner for long enough—replenish that source—eventually, they run out of the energy necessary for their soul to … migrate.”

I hold out my hands as if I can stop her from speaking. As though it won’t be true if she simply doesn’t say it.

“So eventually, when you die, you’re gone. Just like the rest of us,” she adds in a whisper. When I say nothing, she continues, probably as much to fill the awkward silence as anything. “That’s what the Reduciata are trying to do. They believe that if they can permanently kill enough sets of Earthbounds that their power will revert to the remaining gods. They’re trying to return themselves to the level of strength the Earthmakers—the Earthbounds before the fall—were originally endowed with. And they’ve done a fairly good job already.”

“How many?” I whisper.

“How many what?”

“How many lifetimes?”

Sammi hesitates. “Seven.”

The math is instantaneous. Two hundred years since I was with Quinn. “This is my seventh lifetime, isn’t it?”

Sammi nods.

“And Logan’s?” In my mind he has already reverted to his new self, his new name.

“As far as we can tell, his too,” Sammi confirms.

The message is brutally clear: if I run away with Benson, Logan and I both end as soon as we die.

And maybe the world perishes with us.

Five minutes ago, I thought I would give anything up for love—but now, will I have to give up love to save the world?

I let my head drop and Sammi interprets it as concession. “You won’t regret this,” she says, a flutter of excitement in her voice.

Before I can contradict her, she sifts around in her briefcase for a few moments, then steps toward me with something held between her palms. “When I first met you,” she begins, “when you were Sonya, you were so afraid of us. Afraid of being discovered by the Reduciata, especially. And then when you found out Darius had been killed, you … you never wanted to remember that life. At all. You wouldn’t give us anything to do a memory pull with, never told us more than was absolutely necessary. But one day I came in and you had been lying on the floor reading and, without thinking, you braided the edge of the carpet. It wasn’t much, but technically, you made it.”

“Do you mean I made it with my powers?” I ask, not understanding.

She shakes her head. “I’ve been telling you for months that being an artist is integral to who you are. You don’t have to do anything supernatural to create something that will help you remember—or else what would Destroyers be left with? You just have to make it. Generally in the form of art, painting, sculpting, or”—she gestures at my necklace—“jewelry. Simple as it is, I’m pretty sure this bit of carpet counts. I tied both ends and cut it off. It shouldn’t have mattered that much; a memory pull with a creation from any of the lifetimes should restore them all. But I kept it just in case. And now?” She raises her eyelashes, showing intense blue eyes. “I don’t know if you do want to remember that life or not. Whatever happened to make you so paranoid, you didn’t tell us. Maybe it’s better left buried. But I think that’s a choice you should make for yourself.”

I’m afraid to reach out my hand, but I don’t have to. Sammi is already shaking her head.

“Don’t touch it,” she says. “Don’t even look at it. Not until you decide if you want to. Those memories might be somewhere in your head—but if Elizabeth is right, you may need this to get Sonya’s memories back. I’m going to tuck it in here.” She slides a Ziploc bag into a small pocket of my backpack and holds it out to me. “Now it’s up to you.” Then, before I can even process her confession, she’s walking away.

“I’ll call the pilot and have him start preparations. Grab anything you want to take with you from this car that you borrowed,” she calls over her shoulder. “We’re leaving it here. Maybe it will find its way home.”

I turn to Benson and lean my forehead against his shoulder, drawing strength from him as his arms wind around me, pulling me close. I feel like my whole body is devoid of energy after everything I’ve learned and heard today.

Hell, the last several days.

He’s my anchor to reality. No, more than that—my own sanity.

“I don’t know what to do,” I admit, my lips close to his ear.

“Let’s start with collecting our stuff,” he whispers. “That way, if you want to run, you’re ready. But”—he pauses—“if you do still want to, maybe it’s best if we go with them tonight and run tomorrow. At least we’d be thousands of miles away.”

“Forgive me if I don’t share your confidence in a plane getting us anywhere safely,” I say darkly.

He squeezes my hand in understanding before reaching into the center console and grabbing his phone. He holds it, looking down at it for a moment, and then his expression grows hard and he throws it as hard as he can into the trees.